The House is holding another vote to expel Rep. George Santos. This one is planned for Thursday or Friday, and this time, it’s expected to succeed. Santos, though, is not buckling to pressure from his fellow Republicans and resigning. The notorious liar who is facing federal charges for campaign fraud is going to make them vote him out.
“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” Santos said on X Spaces Friday. “I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.” A Politico whip count came to the same conclusion, finding nearly 90 House Republicans either firmly planning to vote Santos out or leaning that way. Along with every Democrat in the House, that would get to the two-thirds vote required to expel him.
”All these members are pushing” for his resignation, Santos told reporters. “They want me to resign because they don't want to take this tough vote that sets the precedent to their own demise in the future.” Santos is leaning hard on the precedent argument, saying in a floor speech Tuesday, “This expulsion vote simply undermines and underscores the precedent that we’ve had in this chamber. It starts and puts us in a new direction. A dangerous one that sets a very dangerous precedent for the future.” The precedent he’s referring to is that every previous House expulsion came after a criminal conviction.
That argument is kind of working on Speaker Mike Johnson, who told reporters Wednesday that he has “real reservations” about the precedent expulsion would set. (Reservations about Republicans facing consequences for their actions, maybe; reservations about a smaller majority, definitely.) Johnson, however, is not whipping votes on this issue.
The thing is, the precedent argument ignores the tradition of resigning in disgrace. It’s something Republicans resist strongly these days—especially right now, when they have such a narrow House majority—but it’s likely that over the years, some number of expulsions have been headed off by resignations. Santos is not going to be that guy, though, even if he was elected on the basis of a fictional autobiography and qualifications and is now facing 23 federal criminal charges.
Innocent until proven guilty is an important principle in the criminal justice system. It’s okay to say that the bar for being expelled from Congress should be a little lower than the bar for going to prison.
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